HUMANE Act corrodes protections

SAN ANTONIO — Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Henry Cuellar are proposing a bill that would make it more difficult for children crossing the border alone to receive humanitarian relief.

That's fine; they're lawmakers, a Republican and a Democrat, respectively; proposing new laws is what they do. (Crossing the aisle is also what Cuellar likes to do: He once supported George W. Bush for president and served as secretary of state under Gov. Rick Perry.)

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It's a nifty acronym, I get it. It stands for “Helping Unaccompanied Minors and Alleviating National Emergency.” One problem: It doesn't help minors.

Since October, nearly 60,000 unaccompanied minors have crossed the border. Many are fleeing poverty and gang violence in their home countries, mostly Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Cornyn and Cuellar's bill would amend a 2008 sex trafficking law that gives special protections to children from such countries. Many are granted immigration hearings scheduled into the future and reunited with family members in the United States.

Some never show up to the hearings. This is the problem the HUMANE Act is trying to alleviate.

Far from helping these children, the bill by Cornyn and Cuellar would corrode their protections by requiring such minors to request asylum or humanitarian visas within seven days. Immigration judges would then have 72 hours to decide whether the children are eligible.

This would allow authorities to quickly deport those who don't qualify. Given the proposed timeframe, rapid deportations would ensue, regardless of whether the children are fleeing horrendous conditions at home.

Already, the odds are stacked against such immigrants seeking relief.

To be eligible for asylum, they must demonstrate a well-founded fear that if returned home, they would be persecuted based on one of five characteristics: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

On Wednesday, I spoke to a local attorney who handles asylum cases pro bono, or without pay. Such cases must be handled this way: No one in immigration proceedings is entitled to a lawyer.

(The attorney, who has represented Somalis fleeing clan-based violence, asked not to be identified.)

Under current law, asylum is an ambitious goal for the kids now flooding the border, especially given the circumstances they're fleeing.

“That's really a stretch for asylum,” the attorney said. “It's hard to fit their circumstances, which are essentially poverty and violence, into a clean-cut asylum claim.”

It's easier to portray violence sparked by clan status in Africa, for instance, as persecution: “That's the way you have to craft the case.”

And even these cases require much more than 72 hours to defend.

“It's not just a quick-and-dirty type application,” the attorney said. “It would take at least a month.”

These facts resonate with Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio.

“The name (the HUMANE Act) is ironic because it's scaling back protections for these kids,” Castro told me. “It would hurt their chances of getting asylum. ... It endangers the children's due process.”

Jonathan Ryan agreed.

“The HUMANE Act is anything but,” said Ryan, executive director of RAICES, a nonprofit that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants in Texas. “This appears to not only remove special protections ... this puts these children in a worse position than adults who are unlawfully entering the United States.

“It lessens their access to apply for asylum,” he said.

In the face of a sudden humanitarian crisis, Congress should consider temporarily expanding protections to address the conditions these children are facing: war-zone murder rates, merciless gang violence.